A Vow to End Hollow Nods and Salutes

After the release last Thursday of the internal report on General Motors’ failure to recall thousands of defective cars for more than a decade, Mary T. Barra, the chief executive, addressed the company’s employees. In her remarks, Ms. Barra projected an earnest and urgent desire to reform the company’s culture, which she said was permeated by “bureaucratic processes that avoided accountability.” That culture meant no one took responsibility for faulty ignition switches in Chevrolet Cobalts and other cars that were ultimately responsible for at least 13 deaths.

Ms. Barra told her audience that she wanted to make sure this sort of thing never happened again at G.M. I believe her. But the depth of the dysfunction at this company, as detailed in the report, makes it hard to see how she can keep that pledge.

The report, which was the result of an investigation by Anton R. Valukas, a partner at Jenner & Block, says G.M. officials showed a “pattern of incompetence” that led to inaction on the defects, Ms. Barra said.

That’s the mild version. The report exposes a mind-set throughout the company that was so self-absorbed, so bent on self-preservation and self-protection that it routinely put its customers last.

The issue of the Cobalt ignition switch “passed through an astonishing number of committees,” the report states. “We repeatedly heard from witnesses that they flagged the issue, proposed a solution, and the solution died in a committee or with some other ad hoc group exploring the issue.”

That’s troubling enough. But the report also concludes that it was impossible to determine the “identity of any actual decision-maker” involved in these discussions. Even identifying who attended these meetings or discovering what topics they discussed was difficult. Why? Because minutes of the meetings, showing who attended and what was said, were rarely taken.

Such a practice seems intended to avoid accountability.

No minutes were taken, for example, at a December 2013 meeting about the potential recall. Such a record would have outlined the discussion by the three G.M. executives who attended, all of whom had to agree that a recall should be issued.

Some employees told Jenner & Block investigators they did not take notes at safety meetings “because they believed G.M. lawyers did not want such notes taken.”

Shifting responsibility for problems to others was deep in the company’s DNA, the report shows. Avoiding accountability was so automatic that it even had a name, like a yoga pose. “The G.M. salute” involved “a crossing of the arms and pointing outwards toward others, indicating that the responsibility belongs to someone else, not me,” the report said.

Along these lines was the “G.M. nod”— when everyone agrees to a plan of action after a meeting “but then leaves the room with no intention to follow through,” the report said.

Another disturbing aspect of the culture at G.M. was the “formal training” the company gave to employees writing about safety issues. A 2008 presentation, for example, warned employees to write “smart.”

What did writing smart mean? Words such as “problem” and “defect” were banned. Employees should instead use softer words — “issue,” “condition” or “matter.” Rather than write about a “defect,” employees should note that the car “does not perform to design.”

Sometimes entire sentences were forbidden, according to the report. “Dangerous ... almost caused accident,” was off limits, for example, as was, “This is a safety and security issue. ...” Finally, employees were advised not to use phrases such as “tomblike” and “rolling sarcophagus.”

This manipulation of language reminded me of George Orwell’s incisive 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language.” Although the focus of his essay is the bankrupt verbiage favored by politicians, Orwell could just as easily have been describing corporate-speak at G.M.

“Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable,” Orwell wrote.

Reading the report and knowing that innocent people died because of G.M. employees’ me-first practices is stomach-turning.

But while this report exposes severe shortcomings in one company’s culture, the practices it details are not anomalous. In fact, they seem to have become commonplace elsewhere in corporate America: an indifference to misconduct, a drive to avoid personal responsibility and scorched-earth retaliation against critics or adversaries.

A similar failure of accountability permeated the financial industry and most of its high-powered federal regulators for the last decade. No executive or regulator of any significance has been held responsible for actions — or inactions — that led to the financial crisis of 2008.

Big bank shareholders have paid billions of dollars in fines, legal fees and settlement costs arising from their companies’ dubious practices, and the banks’ customers, who received high-cost and predatory loans, also paid a price.

But the people who made those loans or sold them to investors are, for the most part, living large.

Although G.M. fired 15 employees as a result of the report’s findings, its customers and shareholders will wind up shouldering the heaviest costs of this debacle.

Ms. Barra says she wants a new culture of integrity. But simply telling employees that they must change won’t do the job.

Here’s an idea for her: Why not force every one of the people who ignored the ignition switch problem, every member of all those committees that met and did nothing over the years, to meet with the families of the G.M. customers who died driving the faulty cars. Each one of these executives should experience, if only for a few moments, the trauma their indifference unleashed on these families.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page BU1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Vow to End Hollow Nods and Salutes. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe